“Re-View: Onnasch Collection”

Visitors to this superbly installed exhibition of work from the holdings of German collector Reinhard Onnasch (b. 1939) may be forgiven for thinking they had somehow wandered out of the commercial milieu of Chelsea and into the permanent collection of New York’s Museum of Modern Art. “Re-View” surveys postwar art, from Barnett Newman and Clifford Still’s abstract paintings to major pieces by conceptualist Hanne Darboven and sculptor Richard Serra. The show differs from MoMA’s presentation of the same material by infusing the narrative with an underdog sensibility. Pride of place is given to the likes of Edward Kienholz’s oddball assemblages; John Wesley’s part-Pop, part-folk, part-Minimalist paintings; and Fluxus artist George Brecht’s understated “events” objects, which include a side table the artist subtly altered by applying discrete rainbow bands to the bottom of a single leg.